Lost/UP Bridges over Dale Creek in Albany County, WY

(1868 Wood Bridge Hunter, 1878 Iron Bridge Hunter, Satellite)

You can still see the cuts through the granite hills on each side. Each cut is about a mile long. The piers also remain.

Francis Otterbein posted
A train passes over the Dale Creek Bridge on the Union Pacific Railway in Sherman, Wyoming, 1885 by William Henry Jackson (American, 1843-1942) (silver print)
[Higher resolution images are available here.]

Jeffrey Stoveken The stay cables on either side are what scares me.
[They show up in front of the bushes in the lower left.]

Billy Pine Trains were restricted to 5mph if I recall properly
Tyler DreisowTyler and 827 others joined RAILROAD BRIDGES, TRESTLES, TUNNELS AND CUTS within the last two weeks. Give them a warm welcome into your community! After three attempts of putting a bridge in that same place they relocated the tracks to where MT1&2 are today. That location is still known by UP as Dale. The wind is very bad up on top of Sherman Hill with gusts up to 80 mph. I know from personal experience that the weather can be wild up there. Being on the continental divide it stirs up a whole new weather system. It's pretty crazy, downhill west in Laramie will be nice, sunshine not a lick of bad times. Get up there and it'll be foggy, raining, snowing, blowing... you name it. Winter is the worst time to be up there.
Daniel Herkes That crossing was unnecessary. It was only built because of the scheming consulting engineer Silas Seymour who added complexity to the original route for political gain. Dip into Maury Klein's "Union Pacific" for the details. Seymour was added to the team of civil engineers due to his political connection, but meddled continuously with a more direct and cheaper route. His route was full of strategic incubus like Dale Creek. Grenville Dodge hated him.
[Some of the comments discuss the second locomotive, a camel back. Camel backs were designed for tight quarters like yards. Why one would be out on the UP mainline is a real puzzle for me.]

At 650 feet, it was the longest bridge on the UP and stood 150 feet above Dale Creek. It had a speed limit of 4 mph. It "was dismantled in 1901, when the Union Pacific completed construction of a new alignment over Sherman Hill as part of a massive reconstruction/improvement project which shortened the Overland Route by 30.47 miles (49 km)." [Wikipedia]

I can't believe the UP mainline was using something that spindly into the 20th century. Steam locomotives started getting big by then.

This colorization was...

Image

...based on this photo.

Photo

As frail as the iron bridge looks, the wood trestle that was built during 1864-1869 is what caused them to add guy wires to the trestle.

By Andrew J. Russell - Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library [1], Public Domain, Link

By Williams, Henry T. or unknown artist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
[This strikes me as bizarre looking because there is no diagonal bracing between the bents. The diagonal lines we see are the guy wires.]

William Henry Jackson [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

WyomingTailes has more photos.